Monday, January 21, 2013

Bharat Diamond Bourse Inaugurates Trading Floor

The Bharat Diamond Bourse (BDB) inaugurated its trading floor on
Saturday, with an aim to widen the scope of trading within the complex
and facilitate the operations of smaller companies and traders.

Anoop
Mehta, the president of BDB, stated that over the past two years most
of the larger diamond companies have relocated their operations to the
bourse and several others are in the process of doing so. Currently,
there are 425 offices of 300 companies operational within the premises,
while work on the interiors of another 415 offices is nearing
completion, he added.

“The
opening of the SG Jhaveri Trading Hall will help accelerate this
process of shifting the entire operations of the industry from the Opera
House area to BKC,” Mehta said.

The trading hall is named after
the late S.G. Jhaveri, who in the 1970s was one of the first to suggest
setting up a diamond bourse in India and who worked toward that
goal until his death in 1991. Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar,
who was instrumental in allocating the land on which the BDB occupies
today, unveiled the statue of Jhaveri and inaugurated the trading floor.

“We are honoring a visionary and we are also celebrating a
collective success in completing this complex and beginning of new
chapter in our history,” Jhaveri’s son Kamlesh stated.

Pawar said that this facility would further boost the industry.

The
BDB, located in the Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) in suburban Mumbai,
occupies two million square feet of space and houses 2,500 diamond
offices of various sizes. It offers facilities such as a trading hall,
customs office, banking, restaurants, and security surveillance in the
same complex.

“Our bourse is moving forward at a very important
moment, and the massive manufacturing edifice that we have built up will
be further strengthened by the development of this new trading
infrastructure," Mehta noted.